


just you and your hand tonight

by icygrace



Series: Reezy Knows Best [2]
Category: Olympics RPF, Sports RPF, Swimming RPF
Genre: Family, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 10:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icygrace/pseuds/icygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes they don’t see eye-to-eye when it comes to their kids. Sometimes that has consequences.  </p><p>Or "When MP Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	just you and your hand tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “U + Ur Hand” by Pink. Spoilers for a movie mentioned in the story. Thank you truly to the fabulous maeir and mugglemiranda for their comments and advice! More notes at the end.

“Seriously, Mike? Not fair. Like, you owe me. My balls are fucking _indigo_ right now.”

“You said you’d make it up to me. Never said I’d return the favor.” Michael shrugs. “Sleep tight, Doggy.”

Two fucking _weeks_ , fuck his _life_.

\---

It all starts with Lo passing on wings and picking at her pizza during their Friday dinner, claiming she just isn’t very hungry.

Actually, it’s really the fact that she kicks Oliver and Charlie under the table (she has to have, people don’t just _yelp_ like that for no reason) when they both blurt out, “That’s what you said at lunch.”

After a week of pushing breakfast and dinner around her plate.

That’s when Michael gets up to feel Lo’s forehead and says she’s _maybe_ just a touch warm and should lie down.

(Ryan would bet his most expensive grill she’s really not much warmer than usual.)

\---

After he gets back from taking Charlie home, Ryan stops by Lo’s room to see if she needs anything and to say goodnight if she doesn’t.

“How you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“No fever?”

“Nope.”

“So what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Uh huh.”

“Nope, sorry, not buying it.”

“Really.”

“You can tell me and –” And – sudden inspiration. “I can pretend I didn’t notice you kicking the boys under the table or I can tell Dad and he can –”

“Don’t.”

He raises an eyebrow. (Yeah, he finally figured that out. Jeah Reezy.)

“Please.”

“Spill or I sing like a canary.”

“ _Daddy_.”

“And if I tell Dad, you know Nathan’ll find out and he’s not gonna be happy his kid’s getting, like, beaten up over –”

“I didn’t _beat them up_. Just two little kicks!”

“So you admit it.”

Lo rolls her eyes before looking away. “Fine.” She sighs after a little and then a little after that, finally starts talking. “So, like, last week, um, Anna . . .”

As Anna’s comments bubble up . . . well, the mysterious disappearance of her usually healthy appetite suddenly makes a lot of sense.

Can you get arrested if you strangle your daughter’s coach for telling her she might be too _big_ for her sport now?

I mean, he gets it. He’s seen the gymnasts on Team USA. And when your kid does an activity for as long as Lo’s been into gymnastics, you learn a fuck-ton about it.

Your average competitive gymnast is just under/over 5 feet. Lo is 5’6 and growing, if his sisters and Dalia are anything to go by. She’s not just under/over a hundred pounds. (Not that she should be. _Ever_.)

And she’s injured herself more since hitting her growth spurt than she has in all the years since she started gymnastics: one wrist sprain, two finger fractures and most recently, something called . . . fuck, wait, Mike spent _hours_ Googling it after they got back from the doctor. . . Osgood-something. She had to spend a week resting, taking Tylenol, with her knee iced, bandaged and elevated and didn’t go back to full training for a month.

(Unfortunately for him and Michael and Oliver, Lo was too annoyed at being laid up to appreciate being waited on hand-and-foot.

And didn’t hesitate to tell them that. Often.

When Oliver finally cracked and asked if she was PMS-ing, she threw a water bottle at him.

A Nalgene – a _full to the brim_ Nalgene – to be exact.

Oliver just barely ducked fast enough to avoid a head injury and left to hide out in his room and _get away from_ _my_ _crazy_ _[unrepeatable words] sister_ – a comment that got him an _OLIVER WAYNE_ – before Lo could try using another everyday object as a weapon.

Once Oliver was out of earshot, Lo apologized before sheepishly asking for _chocolate and chips, please, Daddy?_ ) 

But, like, couldn’t her coach . . . let her down gently? Instead of setting her up for a fucking _eating disorder_?

Lo sits up, looking at him with that scary-intense gleam in her eye that reminds him way too much of Michael. “I mean, she’s right, the tricks and everything are . . . they’re harder now, but if I lose –”

Oh, fuck no. “You’re healthy. You’re not going to go nuts losing a ton of –”

“Not a ton, just –”

 _Not a ton_ ? Yeah, tell that to somebody that wasn’t around this past week. “ _No_ , Lo. You don’t need to –”

“But I _do_. I mean, I can’t make myself shorter, so that’s really my only –”

“ _Lauren Eli_ –”

“Well, if I were smaller,” she gripes instead of letting him keep talking.

“You’d have to be a midg –”

“Seriously, Daddy –”

“Like a real, actual legal midget –”

“Daddy, first of all, that’s _pejorative_ –”

“Pe- _what_ -ative?”

“Pejorative. Offensive. The appropriate terms are dwarf or little person,” she primly informs him.

“OK, a legal _little person_ to be the right,” he makes air quotes, “size for gymnastics.”

She’s quiet for a little. “It’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair? Like besides them exp –”

“That, like, you and Dad and Oliver like . . . you’re _perfect_ for your thing. And like . . . it sucks for me because I’m just not . . . right for gymnastics.”

Ryan can’t help but feel a little guilty, since that’s kind of all on him, really. (After all, Cassie – their surrogate – wasn’t the one over 6 feet tall.) “But you’re right for ballet,” he tries.

“Not really – too . . . you know,” she gestures vaguely at herself.

“Too?”

“You know?”

He doesn’t, but they’re not really talking about ballet, anyways. There’s more important stuff going on.

“Anyway, I _do_ like ballet and or I wouldn’t do it and _that’s_ fine, I’m not, like, having a hard time or whatever, but ballet’s not . . . competitive.”

Competition. He gets that. Swimming wasn’t – not even basketball was – just about competition for him, but that’s definitely part of the thrill.

“And I just – I don’t _want_ to quit. I’m not a quitter.”

“You’re not a quitter, princess. But . . .”

“But! That basically means _you’re a quitter, but it’s OK_.”

“It doesn’t. Anyways, um, are those really your only options?”

“Yeah. Unless I just want to keep going and suck.”

“You don’t –”

“And like, even if I don’t totally suck and even if I don’t keep giving myself stress fractures, like . . . judges take points off if you don’t look like they think you should, even if they’re not supposed to.”

Fucking _assholes_.

“But anyway, like, I just really . . . like, I’m not as good anymore.” She blinks a couple times. “I mean, maybe if I were, like, exceptional. Like, most of the Olympic gymnasts are tiny, but there’s one or two that are bigger. But _Olympic_ gymnasts – they’re, like, the best, like you and Dad with swimming and all, then maybe . . . I don’t know, it might matter a little less. Like I could work it out. But _I’m_ not the future Olympian.”

“You don’t have to be, nobody expects you to –”

“I know, Daddy. And anyway, I mean, it’d be really cool to be that, like, talented, but yes, I like gymnastics and I hate quitting, but I don’t like it enough for it to be almost my whole life for years and years even if it could be. And like, honestly? You and Dad? I wouldn’t want to be famous like that.”

Lo is so . . . _self-aware_ , is what Debbie would call it, it scares him sometimes. Really, she’s figured it out on her own. All he has to do is tell her to think about what she just said.

She mulls it over for a bit, until finally: “I – uh-huh.”

He doesn’t say anything, just keeps waiting.

“I – I guess it’s OK to quit, then. I just – I’m going to miss it and I – I’m not going to have anything to do,” she finishes, biting her lip.

“What about –”

“Besides ballet.”

“You don’t have to figure it all out right now. I think that’s enough for today.”

“OK,” she finally sighs, leaning into the hand he runs through her curls. She starts to seem a little sleepy, but –

“Now can I feed you?”

At that, Lo practically jumps out of bed, wide-awake. “The boys didn’t finish _all_ the pizza, did they?”

“They would’ve, but I saved you some. Wings too,” he tells her, throwing an arm around her shoulders as they walk downstairs.

\---

Ryan’s still turning his conversation with Lo over in his head after she’s headed back upstairs, so he grabs his sketchpad off the shelf and settles down in the living room to watch a little TV.

He flicks through all the channels because everything looks so _boring_ and finally just picks a random channel to leave on. He’s bent over his sketches when he hears a familiar chant.

_I said_  
_Brr, it’s cold in here._  
_There must be some Clovers in the atmosphere._

_I said_  
_Brr, it’s cold in here._  
_There must be some Clovers in the atmosphere._

_I said, oh-ee, oh-ee, oh, ice, ice, ice_  
_Slow it down._  
_Oh-ee, oh-ee, oh, ice, ice, ice_  
_Here we go._

It’s . . . _Bring It On_. That’s it.

It’s been like 20 years since he last saw _Bring It On_ – fuck, he’s so fucking _old_ – but he still remembers it’s pretty damn funny.

And as he watches, he laughs at all the ridiculous shit that happens and the crazy characters.

Missy is his favorite. She has this totally awesome I-am-who-am-and-if-you-don’t-like-it-too-bad attitude. It’s kind of bitchy, but mostly just bad-ass.

(It cracks him up that her name is Missy, though, because real-life Missy is awesome, but like the least bitchy person ever.)

Missy always just says what she thinks. Like, how she doesn’t really even like cheerleading at first. She even says at her tryout that she wants to join the squad because the school doesn’t have a gymnastics team and she’s . . .

 _A gymnast_.

\---

Lo is about as skeptical as movie Missy, but she agrees to go to JV cheerleading tryouts when school starts next week and give it a shot.

Somehow it slips both their minds to mention it to Michael.

\---

A little over a week after Ryan’s chat with Lo, Oliver walks into the kitchen telling his twin that now that she’s “made the team –”

 _Yes_ . Thank you _._

“You’ll have to introduce me to all the hot seniors –” _That_ explains why Oliver’s so excited.

“Made what team?” Michael asks as he brings the salad bowl over to the table.

 “Cheerleading.”

“ _Varsity_ cheerleading,” Oliver adds proudly.

And Lo was worried about making JV. “That’s my girl, jeah!”

“ _Daddy_ ,” she scolds, rolling her eyes before half-tackling him for a hug.

“Proud of you, princess.”

“Thanks. Really,” she whispers back.

“Congrats, Bean,” Michael pipes up from behind him.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I didn’t know you were trying out,” Michael continues casually (too casually, Ryan doesn’t like it, that tone always means terrible things; it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up), sitting down at the dinner table.

“I, um – well, since I wasn’t going to do gymnastics anymore, Daddy thought cheerleading seemed like a good idea, so all the gymnastics stuff wouldn’t go to waste. So I tried out.”

Michael’s eyes flash in his direction the second Lo looks away. 

Ryan doesn’t even know what he did, but _fuck_.

\---

Once they finish dinner and the kids go upstairs to do their homework, Michael flips the fuck out. “What in the name of God possessed you to tell our daughter to become a _cheerleader_? Like, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you, Ryan?”

The _fuck_? Is he serious right now? “What are you pissed about? Lo was bummed and this fixed the fucking problem, Michael. I found the perfect thing for her to do. You should be high-fiving me or, like –”

“For telling our daughter to go get ogled by every fucking horny idiot at her school?”

(When _Bring It On_ first came out, Ryan and Kyle realized that cheerleading Nationals were a real thing that actually happened in Orlando every year. And they made a point of _going_ every year, because, dude, _hot girls from all over the_ country.

Why didn’t he remember that before he made Lo watch the movie with him?)

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_.

 _Their little girl_.

No wonder Michael wants to kill him.

Ryan can’t even blame him; _he’d_ kill him too.

\---

Clearly Michael’s feeling more forgiving tonight.

Maybe the kids’ good moods rubbed off on him? Oliver had a “really awesome” practice and Lo was super-psyched about the stuff she was working on at hers and showed them a little bit.

Or maybe he felt bad about being a selfish dick last night.

Either way, _awesome_ because two weeks of this . . . sexual deprivation crap is two weeks too long.

“God, _yes_ ” is all he manages as Michael finally ( _finally_ ) – fucking _tease_ – takes him into his mouth, sucking him down.

Then Michael slides his mouth up and down, slow, teasing.

Ryan groans. “Fuck, yes, please, _more_ .” That makes Michael laugh around him and the _vibrations_ . . .

Then more – took him at his word – of the same unhurried licking and sucking, driving him fucking crazy until Michael picks up the pace and it’s – “Like that, Mike,” Ryan grits out, curling his fingers more tightly into Michael’s hair. “That’s it, baby, keep –” 

All of a sudden, Michael stops, pulls off him, pushes himself up and . . . _laughs_.

The _fuck?_

“Did you really think you were getting off that easy?” Michael asks, moving up to the head of the bed and turning over so his back’s to Ryan before pulling the covers up – all in the blink of an eye.

Fucking _A._ “I – what – you fuckin’ _kidding me_ ?” Ryan wants to scream because _Jesus_ , fuck, he just, so _close_ –

“After seeing Lo’s _Sparkies_ when she showed us that routine? No, I’m not _fucking kidding_ y –”

“Spankies, Mike, they’re called _Sp –_ ” And seriously, is he arguing about a fucking _sports uniform_ when his suddenly abandoned dick is still begging for attention? Like, how does he even have enough blood in his brain to _think_ , like fucking –

“Sparkies, Spankies, whatever. Point is every little shithead at St. Peter’s is gonna see them when she does backflips and like – whatever, I’m going to sleep.” Michael pulls the covers up just a little higher. Ryan can’t see his face, but he’s probably smirking, the asshole.

Un- _fucking_ -believable.

(Fucking _cheerleading_.

Lo better fucking _love_ it.)

\---

When “U + Ur Hand” comes on Best of the 00s Radio the next morning, Ryan’s convinced Pink is mocking him.

Or maybe Michael called the station and requested it.

Fucking _troll_.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if any of the gymnastics stuff is off, my knowledge is limited to things gleaned from the Olympics and Internet research. Per my research, Osgood-Schlatter disease can occur in gymnasts and other athletes during periods of growth spurts. If you want to read more of this family (the kids come from olympickids, for the record), they’re featured in my other fics.


End file.
